Paul ’s Comments (group member since Sep 12, 2010)

Paul ’s comments from the Atheists and Skeptics group.

My apolgies, it was obviously my inference rather than your implication.

Lee wrote: "Tina, taking kids to church is ok, I think Christianity can be a big help in family relations and building morals, but it's VERY HARD for a parent to present their own beliefs objectively. Few parents bother to understand alternative religions, and even fewer respect them. "

Lee, you appear to be implying that a church WILL present its beliefs objectively, in context of other beliefs. If that's the case, it is one of the most ludicrous claims I have ever heard.

When I was in primary school in England in the 70s and early 80s we would go to the local C of E church for easte, harvest festival and the like, and have prayers and hymns at the start of every day - for which you would get in trouble for not participating, although I think I was about 10 when I stated my refusal as i didn't believe in god.

Although my dad claims to be a practising catholic he rarely went to church and never made me or my brother go (my sister is significantly older, and she had been sent to a convent school which had lead to very rebellious teen years).

As an adult I will go to a church service for a wedding, christening or whatever, and be polite. for many years I had thought this politeness should include bowing my head when everyone else did, although it always made me uncomfortable. Now i don't do so and feel much better about it; it is surely far worse manners for others to demand that I pretend to give obeisance to their delusions than for me to refuse.

good article, thanks for that

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/...

oh dear, it looks like our 'efforts' to 'convert' Lee have also failed...

unless we do something about it, although i'm not sure what we can do short of taking inspiration from Egypt and rising in defiance. which, being British, is unlikely.

i suppose you can argue that it's our own fault for being stupid and short memoried enough to elect the Tories.

dark days.

A very interesting discussion.

One of the arguments I have with religion is the assumption that people who do not have religious faith are somehow lacking. In your original post, Lee, you decry the rationalist's lack of searching for spiritual answers, but to me that doesn't even mean anything and I suspect means so many different things to different people that it is basically without meaning.

I have said before to people that I don't have a spiritual bone in my body. I am fascinated with religion (in an anthropological and psychological way) partly because, I think, I cannot quite grasp the drive to believe. I do not believe in a soul - I am a materialist and it was obvious to me that we are 'merely' the software created by our complex neurochemistry long before I fully understood the science.

Is it spirituality that I can stand on the moors near where I live and be brought almost to tears by the beauty of the stars on a clear night or a sunset, or by a Titian painting or Handel's Messiah or a Jimi Hendrix solo? That I can feel compassion for people I have never met and likely never will? No, I don't think it is. They are evolved responses that go to make us these incredible, wonderful, vile, creative, destructive, seeking and learning creatures that we are. We can never, individually or as a species, know everything and the urge to pin the explanation for things is a strong one for the animal whose greatest skill is the see patterns.

If you follow christ's teachings because they make the world better and make you feel a better person that is a good thing. The Golden Rule (which pre-dates JC, btw) is a good one to live by. However, if you believe that he was divine then that makes it a religion, and therefore a myth. However, if you don't believe this then you are not a christian by any reasonably understood definition.

The two big problems with revealed religion are right there in those 'R' words. It has to be revealed to someone or some group, and everyone else has to take their word for it. And a religion seems (whether predicated on divinity or not) to be a system that has The Truth. And this means there is no need to question - indeed, whenever religion is dominant it is FORBIDDEN to question certain things.

The only reason that we can have this conversation, that you can be the kind of christian you consider yourself to be (questioning, trying at some level to reconcile faith and fact) is because of the Enlightenment, and all religious modernisation since then has been firefighting to stop the edifice from crumbling.

Just trying to find what I think is a French quote, and it's eluding me. It's something like:

Every village has someone to light a flame to illuminate the darkness, called the teacher, and someone to put out the flame, called the priest.

If anyone can provide the proper quote and source i'd be very grateful!

Hey everyone

Browsing down the homepage updates as i do frequently, i am amazed by two trends - the amount of porn (sorry, erotica) and all the christian lifestyle books.

The vast majority seem to be authored and posted by Americans, perhaps unsurprisingly, and seem divided into three main sorts:

the "how to be better at business/sport/losing weight/being a good wifey with jesus"

bible study companions (which i guess 'interpret' the texts for the audience and concentrate on the bits the author likes)

and the sort that really, really scare me. a recent example being Is God On America's Side Please, please, please reassure me that these freaks are in a minority. The only thing more frightening than people who truly believe that god is on their side are nations that believe god is on their side.

her complete lack of a sense of irony or humour is quite breathtaking